What made you submit your work for consideration for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing?
I’d entered my work before in previous years and been lucky enough to have poems published previously in the anthologies ‘Compass’ and ‘Measure’, so I thought why not have another go at it this year? I think it’s such a wonderful opportunity for NI-based poets to see their work in print, to read their work aloud and to share it with others, and I’m very thankful to CAP and the Heaney family for continuing to provide this unique opportunity.
What theme did you look at in the poem you submitted?
I wrote the poem during my recent maternity leave, while the baby was sleeping. I remember that I was sitting at the kitchen table scrolling through my phone during one of those miserable bleak winter mornings in January 2026 (I think it rained almost every day that month) and the news notifications coming through were – as ever these days with everything going on in the world – heart-breaking.
At the same time, I was receiving a flood of upbeat notifications from a range of commercial companies and apps aiming to sell me something – be it a holiday to ‘beat the January blues’ or something that claimed to improve my life or my body in some way – and it just felt wrong to me, that some people in the world are enduring horrific conditions and barely surviving while the rest of us continue on with our everyday, very privileged lives without ever knowing the same worries or concerns. And I wanted to explore that idea of how powerless and desensitised we can feel in relation to what we see on the news, simply because it isn’t happening to us or in places known to us.
How long did the crafting of the poem take?
Writing this poem happened remarkably quickly – I have a young child at home and I tend to adopt the mantra ‘write when the baby sleeps’ as opposed to ‘sleep when the baby sleeps’. I managed to write the entire poem in one sitting, during my baby’s morning nap. It’s the editing that always takes longer, in my experience. I had to read it aloud several times and move some lines around before I was finally satisfied with the end result.
How did you feel when you found out you were included on the Long List for the award?
Overwhelmed and a little bit shocked, to be honest! I wasn’t expecting it at all. I’ve been writing and submitting my work to various competitions for many years with not much success until more recently.
How was your experience regarding the event which launched the anthology, presented the long listed poets and announced the winner of the award?
I had a truly fantastic experience and thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon – from meeting the other longlisted poets, to having the experience of reading my poetry aloud, to listening to the other poets read their incredible work. Initially, I was very nervous but Conor does a great job of putting people at ease and everyone there was so friendly and so encouraging. It also meant a lot to me to receive the framed certificate for being a longlisted poet and 3 copies of the anthology itself. I want to say a huge congratulations to this year’s winner, Susan Gully – I thought her poem was incredible.
Where to now regarding your poetic writing?
At the moment, I’m producing poems a little sporadically – at the most random of times, an idea or a line will occur to me and I’ll have to grab my notebook or my phone quickly and jot it down before the thought disappears forever. Then I’ll come back to it at some point later in the week and develop it further. I have written around 20 poems that I’m quite proud of, but they don’t really work together as a collection so I’m not sure I would try to get them published. Sometimes I think the joy of writing poetry comes from writing just for you, and not worrying about finding an audience for your work. Aside from that, I’m currently working on finishing a collection of short stories and I also have a novel in the works – I am hopeful that I may be able to publish my fiction within the next few years, but I know I’ve a lot of work to do first before that can happen!
